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KANUNI <\/span>| <\/span>1987- <\/span>| <\/span>Turkey <\/span>:<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n Kanuni is a Turkish motorcycle manufacturer founded in 1950. The company bought the MZ distributor in 1987, which was considered the first step in building a powerful Turkish manufacturer. Since 1995, Kanuni has been manufacturing and exporting motorcycles, scooters, and atvs under the Kanuni brand, headquartered in Istanbul. The company has produced a wide range of bikes, including the Tiger 250 Polis, designed for local police use.<\/p>\n The Kuralkan company website is authoritative: the family business traces to 1950 (from Van in eastern Turkey), entered the motorcycle sector in 1987 as MZ distributor, bought the MZ factory from East Germany in 1989, started domestic production under Kanuni brand in 1994 at Dudullu (Istanbul), moved to the Tuzla facility in 2006. Kanuni — Istanbul, Turkey, founded 1987\/1994 The Kuralkan family: from Van to Van (and Istanbul).<\/p>\n The story of Kanuni begins not with motorcycles but with automobile spare parts in the eastern Anatolian city of Van. The venture started with KURALKAN Spare Parts, a family establishment founded in the early 1980s by four brothers who began manufacturing basic automobile spare parts in Turkey’s industrial zone, with their primary market being Iraq and other surrounding countries. The Kuralkan company’s own timeline extends its automotive ancestry further back: the first step into the automotive sector was as an automotive spare parts dealer in Van — this is the foundation from which the company dates itself to 1950. The spare parts trade in the 1980s brought the brothers into close contact with the commercial reality of the Turkish motorised vehicle market — a market heavily dependent on import, dominated by practical utility, and deeply familiar with Eastern Bloc machinery through the barter trade networks that connected Turkey with its socialist neighbours.<\/p>\n The Kuralkan brothers’ entry into motorcycles came through a characteristic product of Cold War trade geography. Kuralkan was from the 1980s one of the largest component suppliers to VEB Motorradwerk Zschopau — the East German state manufacturer of MZ motorcycles — and in a barter exchange arrangement from 1987 became the general importer of MZ motorcycles for the entire Middle East. The motorcycles were particularly valued there for their simplicity and robustness. The barter arrangement was elegant in its symmetry: Turkish-made components went to Zschopau; German-made MZ motorcycles came back to Turkey and on to the Middle East markets where their durability on poor roads, easy repairability, and modest fuel consumption made them well-suited. Over the years, while manufacturing spare parts, the brothers found themselves also importing MZ motorcycles, which were the primary motorcycle brand in Germany.<\/p>\n The MZ ETZ series — the two-stroke singles that Kuralkan was importing and distributing — had a near-legendary reputation for longevity in demanding conditions. Their air-cooled engines, simple electrics, and robust frames made them popular not only across the Middle East but throughout the developing world. For Kuralkan, building a distributor network for these machines across Turkey and the region was a natural extension of their component supply business and gave them commercial exposure to every aspect of the motorcycle market. Reunification, receivership, and opportunity:<\/p>\n The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 upended the world Kuralkan had built its motorcycle business around. The GDR’s motorcycle industry, which had operated as a state enterprise for four decades, was suddenly subject to the Treuhandanstalt — the German privatisation agency — and the commercial pressure of competing openly with Western manufacturers.<\/p>\n In 1989, Kuralkan purchased the MZ factory from East Germany and brought it to Turkey, continuing production there. This decisive move — acquiring the physical manufacturing equipment and tooling rather than simply the distribution rights — transformed Kuralkan from an importer into a potential manufacturer.<\/p>\n In 1991 Kuralkan wanted to acquire 51 per cent of the meanwhile Treuhand-administered company operating as MZ GmbH, but the deal did not come to pass. The industrial equipment Kuralkan had acquired, however, remained in Turkish hands. On 5 July 1992, the last MZ factory director Eberhard Bredel, his deputy and production manager Christian Heydenreich, and further shareholders from the former MZ development department founded Ingenieur und Technik GmbH (later ITG Engineering), located near the Zschopau main works. ITG bought from the Treuhandanstalt the production equipment for the ETZ 251 and 301 models and sold it on to Kuralkan.<\/p>\n In 1993, MZ entered receivership, and the ETZ patent was sold to Kanuni. This acquisition allowed Kanuni to continue producing models 251 and 301. Kuralkan thus ended up with both the physical production machinery and the intellectual property rights to the machines it had been distributing — a foundation for genuine manufacture rather than mere assembly. The Kanuni brand: 1994 and the name In 1994, domestic production began at a wholly Turkish-owned facility in Dudullu, Istanbul, under the Kanuni brand.<\/p>\n The name itself has a personal origin. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent dissolution of the MZ brand, the brothers seized the opportunity to manufacture motorcycles under a local brand, which they named KANUNI, after Bekir Kuralkan’s son. Bekir Kuralkan, the eldest of the brothers, personally led research and development of the motorcycles for over two decades. The name Kanuni carries additional resonance in Turkish culture: it was the epithet of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent — Kanuni Sultan Süleyman, “the Lawgiver” — whose reign from 1520 to 1566 represented the peak of Ottoman power and is still regarded as a high point of Turkish civilisation.<\/p>\n The dual meaning — a family name and a historical imperial title — gave the brand a dignity that a purely commercial name would lack. From ETZ to a broader range The initial Kanuni production drew directly on the MZ heritage: by the late 1990s, two-stroke production had stopped in Germany and MZ machines were being made in the Kanuni factory in Turkey. Initially bikes were badged MZ with Kanuni written on the seat, but in the early 2000s they revamped the cosmetics completely and finally dropped the MZ badge. The transition from MZ-derived two-strokes to a broader proprietary range marked Kanuni’s evolution from a licence producer into a more independent manufacturer.<\/p>\n Since 1995 the company started manufacturing and exporting motorcycles, scooters and ATVs under the Kanuni brand, being headquartered in Istanbul. At this time the company had no less than 500 employees, the main office being able to produce approximately 1,000 motorcycles per day. The model range expanded substantially. Over the years Kanuni developed a diverse range of motorcycle models including the Seyhan 250 C (introduced 2004), along with scooters, ATVs and minibikes spanning models named Bobcat, Breton, Buffalo, Caracal, Cheetah 125, Cross, Deer, Elite, Enduro, Freedom, Hussar, Rabbit, Racer, Rokko, Speedy, Storm, Tiger 250, Tigrina 100, Trex, Windy and Zebra. The range addressed commuter, sport, police, off-road and leisure segments simultaneously — a breadth unusual for a manufacturer at Kanuni’s scale.<\/p>\n The Kanuni Tiger 250 was a single-cylinder four-stroke cruiser motorcycle with a 249cc engine producing 19.04hp at 8,000rpm and 18Nm torque at 7,000rpm, with a 5-speed transmission, telescopic front forks, hydraulic double rear dampers, dual disc front brake and drum rear brake. The Tiger 250 Polis cruise motorcycle, manufactured from 2005, was based on the Tiger 250 but was especially designed by Kanuni to be used by local police. Police specification motorcycles represent a valuable institutional contract that validates a manufacturer’s reliability and provides stable fleet volume — the Polis version confirms Kanuni’s acceptance as a credible domestic supplier at government procurement level.<\/p>\n In 2006 the modern facility at Tuzla-Tepeören, near Sabiha Gökçen Airport, came into service. The Kanuni Motorcycle Base, with 60,000 square metres of enclosed space, is one of the largest motorcycle production facilities in the near region. The factory contains a training track, a riding test area, storage, assembly and a comprehensive quality control unit. Kanuni has partnerships with South Korea-based S&T Motors and India-based Bajaj Auto. The Bajaj relationship in particular opened access to modern four-stroke engine technology and sport-oriented models to complement Kanuni’s utility range, while the S&T Motors connection extended Kanuni’s reach into the Korean-designed motorcycle sector. Kuralkan operates 130+ dealerships and 200+ authorised service points across Turkey. Legacy and continuity Kanuni’s trajectory — from spare parts trading in Van to MZ distributor to licence producer to independent manufacturer with a 60,000 square metre facility — is one of the more unusual origin stories in the motorcycle industry. The MZ connection gave Kuralkan something rare: not just a distribution agreement but the physical production equipment, the engineering drawings, and eventually the patent rights to one of the most robustly engineered two-stroke motorcycle families in history. On that foundation the Kuralkan family built a genuinely Turkish motorcycle manufacturer, continuing under the Gamaarge brand as its engineering and manufacturing arm, with over three decades of experience spanning design, mould making and production. The brand name chosen — Kanuni, the Lawgiver — proved appropriate: in the Turkish motorcycle market, it has given the law to its domestic competitors through the combination of institutional credibility, manufacturing scale, and a model range broad enough to address almost every two-wheeled need.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KANUNI\u00a0 |\u00a0 1987-\u00a0 |\u00a0 Turkey\u00a0 : Kanuni is a Turkish motorcycle manufacturer founded in 1950. The company bought the MZ distributor in 1987, which was considered the first step in building a powerful Turkish manufacturer. Since 1995, Kanuni has<\/p>\n